Patek Philippe
Owned by the Stern family since 1932, and kept small on purpose: production grows by a few percent a year at most. Patek Philippe is a textbook example of haute horlogerie.
Service and repair of your Patek Philippe
Vintage Patek Philippe comes into the workshop too: hand-wound watches, an art deco watch in platinum and now and then a Patek with a quartz movement. These are watches you take good care of, and that is where the work starts as well: look first, and only then do anything.
In a service the movement is completely disassembled, cleaned, lubricated and regulated.
If the case or the bracelet needs refinishing, it's done with restraint: on a watch like this the case is part of the value, and polishing removes metal that doesn't come back. We weigh that up together, before anything is done.
You get a quote first; the work only starts once you've agreed, in the workshop in Weesp.
History
The story of Patek Philippe began with two Poles in exile. On 1 May 1839 the watchmaker Antoni Patek and his partner Franciszek Czapek founded Patek, Czapek & Cie in Geneva and began making pocket watches. Six years later the partnership broke up in a quarrel and the company was dissolved.
What happened next made the house. Patek found a new partner in the French watchmaker Adrien Philippe, the man behind the keyless winding mechanism. On 15 May 1845 they started again together, and on 1 January 1851 the name stood as we know it today: Patek, Philippe & Cie.
That same year Queen Victoria bought one of their watches at the Great Exhibition in London, set with rose-cut diamonds in the shape of a bouquet. In 1868 the house made the first Swiss wristwatch, for Countess Koscowicz of Hungary. The Calatrava cross, its mark since 1887, is taken from a Spanish order of knights.
In 1875 Adrien Philippe had a watch made that he gave to his daughter Louise as a wedding present — the only wristwatch Patek or Philippe ever owned themselves, auctioned in 2023 as 'The Watchmaker's Daughter' for 7 million dollars. Her husband, Joseph Antoine Bénassy, succeeded Antoni Patek when he died in 1877, because Patek's own son had no interest in it.
Since 1932 the house has been owned by the Stern family, who took it over in the middle of the Depression; they had been supplying its dials for years. Four Sterns have run it since, and since 2009 it has been Thierry. The numbers are kept small on purpose: 40,000 in 2010, 62,000 in 2018, and beyond that at most a few percent are added each year — with a ceiling.